Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery

Cuomo’s gun ban prevents all crimes

Like this one, in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The victim was saved by fast-thinking and -acting firefighters from FDNY Engine Company 9:

Ming Guang Haung, 28, was arrested on Sunday after he allegedly used a meat cleaver to hack and slash at his wife.

“He pulls a cleaver out of his waistband and starts hacking at this woman. I rush him, I try to grab the cleaver, but he’s swinging six, eight, maybe ten times,” firefighter Jose Ortiz said.

Ortiz, ran outside and grabbed the man, sending his weapon flying.

“We finally get him down on the ground. The lady that was hurt, she bolts. (Fellow firefighter) Shane (Clark) follows her, because I told him, ‘You’ve got to follow the lady, because she’s hurt,’” Ortiz said.

Firefighter Shane Clarke chased the woman to a restaurant nearby on East Broadway.

“I ran up to the commotion, and I could see that she was bleeding heavily all over her body, and so I ran back, I grabbed a trauma bag, and at that point, she was sprinting down the block,” Clarke said. “I think she was panicked, more than anything else.”

The 23-year-old woman was taken to Bellevue Hospital. She was initially reported in critical, but stable condition, and later in serious condition, with lacerations to her face, back and hip.

What do people like Cuomo think? When guns are outlawed, or just not handy in the moment, criminals will magically transform into blithe, lotus-eating spirits? The evidence of our experience is that the individual who opts for crime will use any weapon available to him that meets his threshold of lethality.

“Gun manufacturer Beretta USA is considering leaving Maryland because of new anti-gun proposals by legislators,” stated Rodessa, Louisiana Alderwoman Penny Harville. ”The citizens of Rodessa (formerly Frog Level), Louisiana are freedom-loving supporters of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” she continued. “We esteem the 2nd amendment and hold manufactures of firearms in high regard. We would be honored to have Beretta USA consider North Caddo Parish as a new possible location for any part of their gun manufacturing operations. We have the infrastructure they need just a few miles south of town on Highway 1.”
The last time Maryland made moves to limit access to arms Beretta USA moved their warehouse operations to the more gun-friendly state of Virginia.
“Let me quote Beretta General Counsel Jeffery Reh,” said Penny Harville, ‘We literally are part of the arsenal of democracy,’ close quote,” she continued. “I think most of us here in Louisiana would agree with that. Louisiana is an ‘open carry’ state; Rodessa is an ‘open carry town’. We would be proud to have our citizens wearing new Berettas on their hips.”
“Louisiana has a strong work force ready and willing to work, and recently we’ve had an influx of steel manufacturing to our state thanks to Governor Bobby Jindal’s business friendly policies,“ said Mrs. Harville.
Louisiana is known as the ‘Sportsman’s Paradise’. “The Beretta Family would certainly fit right in here with their rich sporting past which spans 500 years of making some of the finest handguns and legendary shotguns in the world,” said Harville.
The Alderwoman finished on a personal note, “My husband taught me how to shoot using a Beretta .25. It was the gun his father bought for his mother in 1958”.
Follow Alderwoman Penny Harville on Twitter @PennyHarville

Not expecting much love for this one, but here goes, for the sake of rational and intelligent argument, which I’ve come to expect from this blog.

Had the man in question access to a pistol at the time of this apparent crime of passion, I think it likely the victim would have been shot. I think it also likely the firemen on scene would not have attempted to disarm him, and could have been shot in the process if they tried. Accepting that, I think while a gun ban won’t prevent stories like this, a decrease in the number of pistols in the hands of violent people may turn pistol homicides into meat cleaver assaults. Interested (sincerely) in why you might disagree.

True enough, Ryan. I am not sure a pistol is a more deadly weapon than a knife when used against an unarmed woman. But it is a more convenient weapon, with greater range, and people who have only seen shootings on the tube probably think they make less mess. I do think a pistol is more useful to criminals seeking to commit robbery and other crimes where the key component is threatening.

After all, the guys who go beyond threatening either have outrageous anger management issues, or are just plain bat guano crazy.

Most people shot are not killed, and it seems that most people shot at by the criminal element are not hit, unless they are meat-cleaver close.

And I don’t see much evidence that a gun ban takes guns away from violent people. It mostly disarms people willing to comply with the ban, ergo, people who are generally law obeyers.

“Accepting that, I think while a gun ban won’t prevent stories like this, a decrease in the number of pistols in the hands of violent people may turn pistol homicides into meat cleaver assaults. Interested (sincerely) in why you might disagree.”

You have pretty succinctly stated the “weapons substitution theory” of gun control proponents. Most people find it intuitively persuasive, which is why we have laws prohibiting convicted felons from legally possessing firearms. The important questions are: Does weapon substitution actually result in less deaths? and, What are the costs?

Having looked at the studies and data for 40+ years, I do not see any persuasive evidence that deaths are actually decreased. While there may be particular incidents, such as this one, where a death might have been prevented, they are likely offset by others where more deaths result. There are numerous reasons for this. For example, people are less likely to resist someone with a firearm than someone armed with a different weapon.

In addition, there are significant costs, which are often overlooked by those who have do not own firearms. The fundamental thought of the “strong gun control” proponents is that if you remove all guns from ordinary citizens hands, then you will make it more difficult for violent people to have guns. Removing all guns has enormous costs and simply has not worked anywhere. Making it more difficult to own guns also has considerable costs and is even less effective. The best efforts seem to be those that do not concern themselves with disarming ordinary citizens at all, but concentate on insuring that known, violent offenders are disarmed. Concentrating on those offenders (project exile, the Boston Gun project, and generally, the work of David Kennedy) seem to have the best cost to benefit ratio. Here is an article with some links:

The example I like to cite is Jamaica, because I’ve instructed at the police academy there. Jamaicans are no more or less inclined to crime than any other population. Their political elites and senior police managers are believers in strict gun control. They live on an island with maybe three ports of entry and five airports. Their country is relatively poor, so a gun is a luxury out of the reach of most of the populace, honest or criminal alike. It should be an ideal laboratory for strict gun control, and an ultra-safe paradise.

In actual fact, it is a monstrously violent place, and armed criminal gangs are so strong that the police patrol Kingston and Spanish Town (where the constabulary’s academy is!) in joint patrols with the Army — four cops and an infantry section with organic weapons (a section is roughly two American squads). And the criminals attack these patrols sometimes, and an all night firefight like a war zone is not unknown.

Prohibition doesn’t work for guns, which is strange because it’s worked so well for drugs and before that, alcohol, right? But apparently the drug dealers (like the bootleggers before them) don’t seem to have a problem slipping a few AKs and PKs into a shipment of a few tons of recreational pharmaceuticals.

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WeaponsMan is a blog about weapons. Primarily ground combat weapons, primarily small arms and man-portable crew-served weapons. The site owner is a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S), and you can expect any guest columnists to be similarly qualified.

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